Wanna cut MediCare? Just leave ObamaCare in place.

We know what the Democrats’ playbook will be running up to 2012: MediScare. They’ll run a play where they MediScare to the left, then they’ll MediScare to the right, and they’ll try running the MediScare right up the middle. The benefit of such a one-dimensional strategy is that as a political message, it will sink in unless the GOP comes up with a counter argument. A pair of writers deliver that counter argument in the Wall Street Journal:

[S]uppose the law is implemented just as it’s written. In that case, according to the Medicare Trustees, Medicare’s long-term unfunded liability fell by $53 trillion on the day ObamaCare was signed.

But at what cost to the elderly? Consider people reaching the age of 65 this year. Under the new law, the average amount spent on these enrollees over the remainder of their lives will fall by about $36,000 at today’s prices. That sum of money is equivalent to about three years of benefits. For 55-year-olds, the spending decrease is about $62,000—or the equivalent of six years of benefits. For 45-year-olds, the loss is more than $105,000, or nine years of benefits.

Do nothing, leave ObamaCare in place, Medicare takes a massive hit. The Ryan plan, which has become the basis of the Democrats’ MediScare campaign, was actually built to save Medicare and get the country back on a path toward solvency. The path we’re on is a path to unsustainable spending and ultimately bankruptcy. The Republicans are going to have to hammer away to counter the Democrats’ MediScare tactics, or defeat in 2012 is a real possibility.

Fortunately for the GOP, ObamaCare is already a loser for the Democrats. Making them defend that awful bill is already part of the GOP’s 2012 game plan.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

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1.
CR

“The path we’re on is a path to unsustainable spending and ultimately bankruptcy.”

There’s a story told about a man with severe difficulties who had no idea how to proceed. The town minister told him to leave a Bible on the window sill and to get strength in the morning from whatever verse the wind would reveal. The next morning he got his answer; Chapter 11!

Well, either way, there will be limitations on government. Either the federal government becomes limited to administering transfer payments for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest on debt obligations and the few functions that are constitutionally mandated like paying members of Congress, the President, Vice President and the federal judiciary (note: the Constitution does not mandate things like a standing army, FBI, EPA, NIH, and all the other alphabet soup of federal agencies), or Social welfare programs get cut down to size to allow these other agencies and functions to exist. Either way, there will be limits.

Bryan…. I would have liked to have seen a different Ryan plan. In fact, I would have like to seen much more input incorporated from the health care studies done by other previous and currently seated non medical professional Republicans. I think Ryan took advantage of ‘emotional political opportunity’ and cobbled together a plan in popular knee-jerk fashion….and the rationale of a bean-counter.

The core problem of circular, arbitrary inflated health care costs is simply not addressed in the Ryan Plan. In a poorly thoughout and constructed plan, Ryan attempts to simply shift a portion of perceived liabilty from the government column to the individual column. It also, appears the plan was put together without any consequential studies given the current and future national economic circumstantes.

The Plan was so poorly thoughtout and constructed that it was guaranteed to be red-meat for the opposition (dems and recipients) and they weren’t prepared to defend…if that is even possible.

Putting aside all social and political ideologies , what is broken in the nations health care is that durn circular, arbitrary inflated value of health care goods and services….corruption at the highest pinnacle!

Until these cost variables are addressed, no plan of transition lessening the government role and economic liability in health care costs is going to have any meaning…. or overall national support, regardless of ones political party affiliation.